November 5, 2013

Bike paths: More wrongs that must be righted

Ken Ohrn found more examples of bike lanes that are destroying parks, threatening the safety of children, are hugely expensive and forced on communities without their say.  What is truly scary is the number of parents and kids who bike to the playgrounds.

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Leave a Reply to Jeff LeighCancel Reply

  1. I should add what Gordon Price has to said about the picture of the bike path illustrating his post

    “Why have we tolerated this desecration through the English Bay greensward when there is the seawall route to the left, or even better, Beach Avenue to the right?”
    Beach Avenue to the right?

    Yes, it is exactly what this tiny bike path section is doing, going to beach Avenue (at English Bay), and coming from the seawall route (Sunset Beach)…

    And what is wrong with that?

    “This is exactly analogous to what is proposed for Kits”? absolutely not, and that is the problem

      1. Pretty much all of Save Kits Beach types recoil in horror if one suggests getting rid of the north parkade and/or even touching either set of courts. Any serious street cycling plan will take out street parking spaces as well and the Kits Pointers will scream. You misleadingly insist the proposed plan is in fact a “highway” and now you’re espousing that the plan will lead to a cycling takeover of the entire beach. It’s perfectly reasonable to remind the wider public that plenty of parks, including some just on the other side of English Bay and False Creek, have bike lanes without becoming bike colonies or whatever you’re afraid of.

      2. Andrew. Plenty of assuming going on by you. I’m a Kits Pointer, have talked about this with my neighbours, and much of what you say isn’t true. But then you claim to have spoken to “Pretty much all of the Save Kits Beach types.”

        My neighbours and I are more than willing to see parking being given up to a bike lane. A separated bike lane with a barrier between it and the roadway.

        As for the bike lane interfering with other uses in the park, well, I ride those other bike paths you refer to, dozens of times a year – out of the 300 or so days a year I’m on my bike – and I see parks much a lot emptier than Kits Beach Park on a typical summer day. To compare those lanes with the proposed lane isn’t helpful; this park is the busiest in the City when annual users/park space is the measure.

        Chill out, don’t impute motives or assume positions of other people and keep an open mind to creating a bike path here that actually improves the experience for bikers without taking anything from other users.

      3. Andrew,

        you are attributing to me some thought I have never expressed, that for apparently no more reason that your good pleasure to disagree with me.

        Notice, it was also what did the Vision commissioners at the Monday 4th meeting: they have considered that a motion on the table was attributing some veto power to an advisory group (something the motion was not reading), to defeat it.

        Not sure where they got this idea, but noticed that many reporters didn’t see the motion on the screen, because they were too busy interviewing Aaron Jasper, then out in the corridor to give his own reading of it…

        for the rest, agree with Adam and I would like to have your take on the Adam willingness to “see parking being given up to a bike lane”?

      4. Yes, it used to be easy to walk up the hillside from English Bay beach after the fireworks, then they built that stone wall (to support the wider path?). Now everyone coming from the beach after the fireworks has to climb a 2 foot stone wall that some people have probems accomplishing.

      1. Voony – you might want to double-check VanMaps to see if it’s supporting your point – especially when the bike path separates from the shared pedestrian path travels through parkland for a length almost equivalent to the distance it travesl adjacent to Beach Avenue (and whether the path veers briefly off park land or not is academic/irrelevant). It doesn’t go on roadspace – which is the alternative proposed. That’s the point that counts.

      2. Spartikus – from Stanely park limit to Burrard bridge, you will find no more than ~200meters of bike path which is neither paired with be the seawall, parking lots or Beach avenue (as you beautifully illustrates): that is ~10% of the total, and this 10% are not gratuitous: they are here to connect one setting to another, with a slope as gentle as possible.

        I am not sure I have uses the word “roadspace”: I have used ROW or street:
        saying that the bike lane in your picture doesn’t belong to Beach avenue is like saying the sidewalk doesn’t belong to it either…
        we could argue on the semantic, for the pleasure to disagree, but tthat is not the purpose:

        Your beautifull shot is taken on a part of Beach ave (66ft ROW), where you have no less than 4 lanes of traffic in addition of the bikepath (OK, to be fair here, the bike path could intrude a couple of feet in the park (the retaining wall is in the park).

        What is wrong with the bike lane in your shot, which preclude to consider such arrangment for Kits, be along Arbutus or Ogden?

        Apart the number of traffic lane, it is exactly the alternative I propose-
        again see http://voony.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/the-disturbing-bike-lane-trend-in-vancouver/

        I clearly understand that the “pave the park” party prefers to frame the debate between the only proposed alternative which is the one bissecting the park or bike on the road with traffic…

        It is simply dishonnest to reduce the debate to only those both alternatives,..that’s it.pretty much what I say, and again I question:

        Why insisting to bisect a narrow and crowded park, when perfect alternatives, still offering a seaside experience to the cyclists, are able to satisfy all parties?

    1. Yes, that was part of the July report package the subject of a pretty extended council meeting. Lots of presenters.

      We should keep clear that the route you are referring to is the commuter route, not the recreational route. They are two separate issues I think, given the different target users, and different stakeholders. But I agree with you that there is likely a path where there used to be grass. There is also recovered land (which used to be pavement) immediately across Cornwall; it may balance out, I don’t know.

  2. It’s a shame to see a former politician who once had made meaningful contributions to debates reduced to attempts to mock citizens who are simply asking for a more considered approach and an honest consultation.

    There should be a nice pasture to put these sorts of old pols out into. Oh yeah. Academia.

    1. And blogging.

      Seriously Mr. Price. When did bikes and parks become enemies? To the point that you consider it acceptable, wise even, to build a bike path a few meters from another bike path, as is proposed by the Park Board in the west extent from Kits Beach Park, from the Yew street entrance to the west end of the park, where the current separated path will be kept in place and another parallel path – 12 feet of of – will be built?! This doesn’t even pass a rudimentary smell test. It’s silliness in the extreme and exposes those not wanting a second sober, planning session to look at the Kits Beach proposal as somewhat knee jerk in favour of any bike lane proposal.

      We know you’re more thoughtful than that.

      1. OK, so clearly you tried to strike a more conciliatory tone in that last sentence to somewhat offset the snideness in your original comment, but even if we remove all the ad hominem attacks, you’re still left with nothing but naked assertions.

      2. From Yew street to the west extent isn’t a separated bike path, as you allege. It is a sidewalk shared by walkers and bikes. The proposal is to take down the fence, and return it to the walkers.

  3. What’s wrong with snideness when responding to smugness? Is there a good way to respond to mocking disguised as informed commentary?

    Naked assertions, perhaps. but some truths we hold to be self evident, and protecting valuable public assets against poorly considered development plans would be one of them.

    Take issue with that? 5 speakers out of 25 last night at the Park Board did as well. All five have financial ties to the bike infrastructure industry and all put forward arguments that wouldn’t stand up under scrutiny. But maybe that was just a coincidence you’d say. and you Jeff, concerned citizen or bike lobby?

    The path I refer to is a de facto bike path. Has been for some time. Since when have walkers in the park stuck close to Cornwall? And are five parallel asphalt paths between Cornwall and the water in a very narrow part of the park required?

    As a bike commuter I find the aggressive, disingenuous bike lobbyists – let’s not call them spokespeople, they don’t speak for me – who have aggressively inserted themselves into this debate very off-putting. Years of defensiveness seem to have given them a hard edge. That’s not the way I ride.

    1. Concerned citizen. No compensation for me. I walk more often than I ride, especially on the seawall. But in Kits park, I usually ride in the delivery lane from Arbutus, around the tennis courts, over to Yew, and up along Cornwall. I encounter walkers every single time I ride there. That is fine, it is a shared path. People walk there because there is no sidewalk.

      I am not a bike commuter. But this isn’t a bike commuter path, it is a recreational path.
      Two different things IMO.

    2. Let me put my cards on the table. I do not have a strong personal attachment to this bike path. When I’m on my bike, I am typically going somewhere: I use my bike for transportation. I prefer a stroll or a run through the park to a bike ride. If I’m going to the beach or to a picnic on my bike, the current configuration hasn’t bothered me personally. However, I do understand that my own experience isn’t the same as everyone else’s, and there could be significant benefits to the many people who like to go for a bike ride through the park.

      But I do have a strong personal attachment to proper debate of ideas. Ad hominem attacks, straw-man arguments, etc. bother me. Naked assertions do not sway me.

      With that in mind, Adam, please consider your statement: “Naked assertions, perhaps. but some truths we hold to be self evident, and protecting valuable public assets against poorly considered development plans would be one of them.”

      1. “Protecting valuable public assets against poorly considered development plans” is not a truth. It is a goal. A goal shared by most people you are arguing against, I would hazard to guess.

      2. “Valuable” and “poorly considered” are subjective opinions. Subjective opinions, by definition, are not self-evident.

      I suggest clearly outlining how you have arrived at your conclusions about the path. I, for one, will be much more likely to consider your views if you explain them more thoroughly. (Though that doesn’t necessarily mean I will agree with them.) At the moment, I am not swayed by anything you’ve written because you have only written your conclusions and not your reasoning.

      Also, please stop trying to ascribe motivations or character traits to the people you are arguing against, and stick to talking about ideas. I think the debate will be much more civilised this way. (And please don’t resort to arguments about who started it. They are distracting and counter-productive.)

      In the spirit of self-mockery, the obligatory XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/386/

  4. You should have a NSFW warning on this post. I was horrified by the senseless slaughter of our children on these two-wheeled paths of death.

  5. Agustin. Well said sir. Who can’t respect a call to arms, if those arms are well made, rational arguments. Particularly in a world of even (especially?) elected officials routinely engage in irrational, fallacy filled nonsense and we humble plebs are left to duke it out in a rational way.

    My dog in the fight is that I am a neighbour and park user, biker and parent to kids who are in the park all the time. I’d like to see a “triple word score.” as the GM of the Park Board put it the other night; a solution that gets a AAA bike lane, keeps the park open for as many users as possible, keeps the aesthetic intact (ok. an assumption here, that asphalt will mar that, but I’m in good company here), and maybe even go some way to address issues of summer traffic problems and some of the dangerous driving that takes place here.

    And for good measure I’d like to see the Hadden Park Trust respected.

    Without making this too long a post, and building an argument from the ground up, I will say that in the camp of those who would like to see a path built, with minimal impact to the park’s open green space, etc., is now the Park Board itself. They have now backed away from the “accepted plan” and the “consultation” that took place, and are forming an Advisory Committee.

    So it seems we’re all on the same page, except for those who are still pushing for the “accepted route,” or arguing that the “opponents are simply against any bike path (I can’t speak for them all, but those I’m speaking with aren’t in this camp. In any event there will always be those taking extreme positions) and sticking to this straw man.

    Good day learned sir.

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